Han Seung-Bum ex-Head of the Cyber Team for the Election Camp of the Head of the Local Government, Representative of Maccine Korea

 

In 2006, as the head of the cyber team for the election camp of a local government head shouted out “Eureka!” I was investigating into the personal information of the head of the cyber team for other camp with only a month left until election day. To my surprise, the head of the opponent’s cyber team was a direct family member of their candidate. Thereafter, the opinion of the other party’s candidate became public through an online posting made by the head of the candidate’s cyber team. I still clearly remember how the other party’s cyber team chief reacted with surprise during the last days of the election campaign when I approached her and said, “we have frequently crossed each other on the internet”, and she uttered in disbelief, “have we really?”

 

Although it is a very important task to determine who the other party’s cyber team chief is in an election, it is common that they remain masked until the end of the elections. This is because the party’s election strategy and organization can also be determined if the identity of the cyber team chief is revealed. The saying, “if you know your enemy and yourself, you can win every battle”, precisely applies to on-line election strategies as well.

 

The most distinct aspect of elections in the 21st century as compared with past elections is that “online reputation management” has become an important factor. As it is generally known, ex-President Moo-Hyun Roh was the world’s first ever president to understand HTML, HyperText Markup Language. Overwhelming support from netizens online during the 2002 Presidential Elections was largely due to his level of understanding of the internet. After serving as the head of the cyber team for a local government head in 2006, I have constantly asserted the argument for “Geun-Hye Park for President.” Furthermore, a year before the last Presidential Elections, through my column titled, “Will Geun-Hye Park’s Digital Mind Save the Grand National Party” (December 30, 2011), I predicted that “from the perspective of online advertising, it is likely that the Grand National Party will arise as the winning party in next year’s Presidential election based on the moves made by Geun-Hye Park, the ex-chairman of the Party, which do not seem like moves coming from a member of the Grand National Party even though she was a Party member”.

 

In fact, the conservative camp and the internet are not too close to each other. In the internet space, where the conservative camp has traditionally shown a weakness, President Geun-Hye Park has shown some achievement during the last Presidential Elections that certainly did not fall behind the progressive camp with her unique digital touch. All of this was mainly made possible by President Geun-Hye Park’s sense of digital touch.

 

The recent “National Intelligence Service Comment” controversy has caused a lot of commotion in Korea. How much influence does an online comment posting have?

People tend to underestimate how much influence an online comment posting may have. A study result (by Eun-Mi Kim) which showed the absolute dominance of the progressive camp on the internet was previously released in 2004. Although people claim that they typically are not influenced by online comments, in fact, it was found that they were.

As a result, ex-President Moo-Hyun Roh urged employees of the Government Information Agency to post online comments, and he was widely known to be the “President who types late into the night”, whereby he enjoyed posting comments until late at night in the Cheongwadae.

 

The controversy regarding the National Intelligence Service comments revolves around the question as to whether Mr. Sae-Hoon Won, the ex-Director of the National Intelligence Service, had directly ordered its employees to intervene in the elections and caused them to post comments to intentionally influence the results of the elections.

 

If I were to conduct cyber election activities with any type of organization, I would conduct the activities based on the application of three basic principles. They would include the “principle of choice and concentration”, the “use of tools with a strong impact”, and the “influence of an acquaintance”.

 

First, in order to campaign through a cyber election, there is the need to mobilize all of the firepower based on “choice and concentration” due to the limitation on resources. In other words, determining where to contend is one of the most important strategies in election campaigns. Similar to how there are core commercial areas in commercial districts, the adversarial campaign activities need to be undertaken at a portal site or social network service (SNS) where the most of the general public gather. For myself, I would have selected Naver (market share of 71.9%) and Daum (21.7%) for portal sites and only Facebook for SNS. Unlike Facebook, Twitter has a strong one-sided party logic which would cause the user to forfeit the battle.

 

However, the sites on which the employees of the National Intelligence Service have posted many comments were those sites that ranked below 50th place in terms of netizen visits (as of last May). Especially, sites such as Today’s Humor (ranked #231), Ilgan Best (ranked #73), Bobae Dream (ranked #163) and Ppomppu (ranked #56) were sites where the logic of conservatives and progressives were indisputable and voters with moderate political views rarely visited, those that are the most susceptible to be influenced by online comments. If the comments were posted on these sites to influence the results of the elections, the person who directed them to do so would have been labeled as a “fool”.

 

Second, in order to be successful in cyber election campaigns, it is important to “use tools with a strong impact.” Netizens have started to avoid text and comments that require them to use their intelligence in order to comprehend them. Therefore, to win the battle in online reputation management, election campaign activities based on images rather than text, and furthermore, videos rather than images, are conducted. No matter how logically a piece of writing is written, an image or video with a strong impact will be crucial in winning an election.

 

The main comments from the National Intelligence Service that were alleged to have influenced the election results are as follows.

'Harmful consequences of reckless use of welfare expenses... will appear 20 to 30 years later.'

'2 years since the bombing of Yeonpyeongdo…did you forget about that day?'

'It seems that the North Korean regime is very scared of Geun-Hye Park'

If the National Intelligence Service seriously intended to bring about an advantageous result for the ruling party’s candidate in the Presidential Elections from such dull and flat text, they are surely a “crazed organization”.

 

Last, in order to motivate and move the hearts of many people through the cyber war of election campaigning, the “influence of an acquaintance” must be maximized.

People often have the tendency to trust the words of a third party rather than the concerned persons. Thus, that is why people rely much more on word-of-mouth of many people rather than the direct advertisements made by companies.

This technique is also directly applied to election campaigns. To draw swing votes that will have a decisive impact on the election results, people are bound to feel greater credibility to the words of regular people and their neighbors rather than official comments of the election camp or zealous supporters. Therefore, in a cyber election campaign, the logic for support of a candidate is formed from the perspective of a close “acquaintance” rather than an extreme supporter of the candidate.

 

On the other hand, the comments posted by secret agents of the National Intelligence Service are arguments consistently made by anti-communist forces to criticize North Korea and followers of the North Korean regime and claim “the defense of the NLL” and “protection of liberal democracy”. If  secret agents of the National Intelligence Service were the ones to post such comments relating to politics or the elections, it seems as if they did so to rather hide their identity to make it seem as if they were regular netizens. If the National Intelligence Service had actually intended to serve a role in the election of Geun-Hye Park in the Presidential race by asserting an extremely one-sided anti-communist logic, they would incur ridicule of all of the world’s intelligence services.

 

The number of comments posted by 70  secret agents of the National Intelligence Service’s psychological warfare group during the past four years was 5,333 comments and only 1,977 of such comments were in relation to politics and elections. Of these comments, only 73 comments which were posted on “Today’s Humor” or “Ilgan Best” were considered to be possible violations of the election laws by the Prosecutors’ Office.

If they actually intended to influence the election results, a single competent elections comment specialist could have produced comments that had ten times greater influence than those posted by the 70  secret agents of the National Intelligence Service’s psychological warfare group.

 

Some may argue that the National Intelligence Service intervened in the elections due to certain political interests. However, from the perspective of an online elections specialist, it can be assuredly stated that the comments posted by the National Intelligence Service have no relationship whatsoever with the elections.

 

The identity of those that attempt to shake down Korea’s greatest intelligence agency and delude the world and deceive the people with arguments that the National Intelligence Service intervened in the Presidential elections can only be North Korean spies and followers of the North Korean regime.